Gunshots
by of quills on parchment
Summary: For KHRFest; It starts with a gunshot, but it doesn't end with a gunshot. Some things just never end.


Prompt : KHRFEST -- Round II. I. 16. Reborn - long life; "I grow weary of the end."  
Disclaimer : I would have butchered everything by now if I owned this.  
Warnings : fail!grammar, long sentences, not much sense and my being weird. .__.;

Please review!

* * *

**Gunshots

* * *

**

It starts with a gunshot.

There is no family—no mention of parents or grandparents or even siblings. There are no documents of prior work, no physical reminders of a dim childhood. There is no evidence of a past, no proof of a life before this man came to be Reborn.

Perchance it just so happened that as darkness shrouded the streets of Italy, he had been among those lurking in the shadows. He had ambition like every other man, pride like any other sinner, yet unlike most, he had the intent to kill, to slaughter not for either prosperity or vengeance, but for the thrill of being what he truly is: a born hitman.

Wielding guns as though they are extensions of his limbs, he pulls the trigger with neither doubt nor hesitation, not even the shred of regret that should have followed. It is an anomaly: even a god has its origins, but Reborn has none. It had started with a gunshot, or perhaps in that lodge in the mountainside where seven—then eight people gathered. In his memory are their faces, bits and pieces and things buried deep in the recesses of his mind, but mostly it is their faces as they climbed that low hill, and they –once seven and now eight- are cursed little fallacies of immortality.

But these are memories long forgotten, buried deep in the recesses of his mind. Its only reminder is the yellow pacifier chained around his neck. The past is bleak, but an empty slate; it doesn't matter as he walks on his now short legs, hold his Beretta M92 now with stubby fingers. His fedora remains tipped on his head in an arrogant angle, his features obscured by darkness—he is still one of the shadows.

The lingering stench of blood and gunpowder and calamity are masked by the scents of baby oil and powder, sugar and caffeine and beginnings but also endings. Always clad in a finely pressed suit, impeccable and untouchable, regal like the sun at its zenith, because that is exactly what he is: seated on his highest throne, the grim reaper incarnate; the embodiment of the blackened soul whose ashen hands are outstretched.

He grasps the bigger hands of those who take his, despite how his weigh more and is more calloused, how his bear more invisible scars. He leads them through darkness, through shadows deep in an abyss where even he can't truly see.

And their growth, their steps, their wandering into what even he cannot control --accursed fate, destiny, life; whatever you call it -- kicking another off a cliff and into the stumble and fall of the future, growing up far too fast has never been a cause for celebration. He can only watch and he only observes, but divination is not a realm of the sun. He does predict his future, and thus, for the moment at least, he is content with the present with its odd twists and turns and utter grayness.

But despite his annoyance of it, the frequent sordid amusement he basks in, he looks back to that time with fondness. Strange, ironic, amusing even, that perhaps the most terrifying of all is when it finally ends, and the thought makes Reborn smile as he pulls on the trigger. The shot doesn't hit, things don't end with a gunshot, but even as he's lying on the ground bleeding and dying, failure and defeat a stark red smear, he grins at that tall man with the white hair and the pale violet eyes as his cold hands unchain and steal the yellow pacifier from around his neck.

He's dying, he's going to die, or perhaps he's already dead and it's just the corpse that won't stop breathing, but it doesn't mean things are over, as his students come, a bit too late but not so much that they at least manage retrieve a cadaver that soon crumbles to dust.

The last thing he sees is the clarity of the sky, the sun starting to set from its highest throne, relinquishing zenith. But the dawn shall always come again, and that is the only reason why his smirk turns pained and grim.

* * *

Fin. 


End file.
